Microsoft adverts with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates scrapped

A baffling Microsoft advert featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates discussing
shoes before the software billionaire shakes his behind as he walks across a
car park has disappeared from the air after critics described it as "awful"
and a "train wreck".

BIll Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. Viewers struggled to fathom what the two men's oblique and unfunny discussion had to do with computers

9:29PM BST 21 Sep 2008

The 90-second spot, one of three adverts for which Seinfeld was paid a reported $10 million, was designed to kick off an ambitious $300 million campaign to relaunch the software company and its troubled Windows Vista operating system.

But two weeks after debuting, the three commercials were withdrawn in favour of other adverts in which Seinfeld, whose eponymous hit sitcom ended a decade ago, is replaced by such stars as the actress Eva Longoria and singer Pharrell Williams.

The first advert featuring Gates and Seinfeld was met by a collective scratching of heads as viewers struggled to fathom what the two men's oblique and unfunny discussion had to do with computers.

The pair are seen in a discount shoe shop talking about what size shoe the world's richest man takes and whether he ever wears clothes in the shower. The comic then if asks Gates can give him a "signal" and "adjust your shorts" if he is working on something "that will make our computers moist and chewy like cake so we can eat them while we are working". Gates responds by wiggling his bottom.

A blogger for Computer World wrote: "It's one of the worst, most pointless ads in history", while Sam Diaz on zdnet.com commented: "The commercials were a train wreck from the beginning and only reinforced the idea that Microsoft is so far disconnected from regular consumers that it has no idea how to talk to them – even in an ad campaign."

Daniel Lyons, of Newsweek, suggested that "hiring a TV star from the 1990s only added to the impression that Microsoft is stuck in a time warp, at a time when Apple is seen as the king of cool and is gaining market share."

Washington-based Microsoft, however, vigorously denied the Gates/Seinfeld adverts were pulled because of their reception and maintained it had always been the plan to replace them after a fortnight with more specific spots focusing on Windows.

"The notion that we're doing some quick thing to cancel (the Seinfeld ads) is actually preposterous," Mich Mathews, a senior vice president in Microsoft's central marketing group.

He described the three Seinfeld spots as attention-grabbing ice breakers designed to heighten people's interest ahead of the "major message" of the subsequent adverts, entitled Life Without Walls, and said the plan had worked.

The Windows-focused campaign is seen as a long-awaited response to the high-profile "I'm a Mac" campaign run by arch rival Apple. In one of the new commercials, a Microsoft engineer who resembles the colourless PC character in the Apple adverts says, "Hello, I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype". He's followed by a montage of real-life PC users, celebrities and Microsoft Windows engineers who all repeat the "I'm a PC" mantra. Gates also appears, saying, "I'm a PC and I wear glasses".

But some critics appeared equally unimpressed with the follow-up ads. "It's no mistake that Microsoft has decided to move to Phase 2 of its 300 million dollar Vista ad campaign without Seinfeld and Gates," writes Burke on Channel Web. "Microsoft realises those ads missed the mark. The problem is the new ad is a bigger bust."

The campaign was designed by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Microsoft said it was "exploring options" with Seinfeld for new adverts for the company but that no commercials beyond the three already screened have so far been filmed.